Ann Getty, Publisher and Bicoastal Arts Patron, Is Dead at 79

Ann Getty, a savvy former California farm girl who married into one of the world’s wealthiest families and transformed herself into a globe-trotting publisher, author, interior designer and philanthropist, died on Monday in San Francisco. She was 79.

Her husband, Gordon Getty, said in a statement that she had a heart attack during a family dinner at home and died in a hospital.

Already ensconced as a San Francisco cultural benefactor, Mrs. Getty in the mid-1980s leapfrogged the continent to New York, where she was wooed to the boards of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the New York Public Library and New York University and sped to the epicenter of the loftiest social circles.

But despite extravagances like a private Boeing 727 (nicknamed Jetty) equipped with a bath and two bedrooms, she resisted being marginalized as a socialite.